Music: Countess Reincarnate

A rare and beautiful woman was
Madame la Comtesse Virginie Oldoïni Verasis-Castiglione, famed
courtesan of the Second Empire who divided her best years between
Piedmont's King Victor Emmanuel and France's Napoleon III. The
Countess's costumes, her jewels and their donors provided half the talk
at the Court in Paris. Artists fought to paint her. Sculptors modeled
her hands, her fingers, her shapely legs, even her ears.

Near Versailles today is a chateau owned by a woman as rare in her way
as the Countess. She is Ganna Walska and because she looks something...